Interesting piece... Why does capitalism always need to create a police state of control ?

The internet runs on a telephone system. In the 1960-90 era, answering machines with three minute cassettes would sell everything from homes to dial a prayer. No one would have created a do not call list to stop this. Today the same phone system gives interaction, and communication at a much higher level, and those that make money, want to kill the golden egg, by creating a police state using the same phone system.

The original internet was not intended to be the cash register of the world. It was designed to educate and communicate.

Deja vu all over again. Canadian Politicians of the mid-1990s were calling for a Canada Customs approach to the Internet. Every incoming bit would be stopped at the border and checked, even if it took a week or more to do it.

I suppose that today's Firewall technology makes it more plausible, but only a few orders of magnitude, which is still not enough to make it to practical, given the hourly volume of incoming data into Canada on the Internet.

Howaboutthat wrote:I don't understand the whole thing. Can someone (non-politically please) explain what the fuss is about and what Bell wants to do... and is it just Bell or are Shaw and Telus involved.Thanks.

I don't think the facts are political in the least, and this firewall thing is related to the current talk about simsub. It gets political when the "public" think they have the right to view produced content how they want and in a lot of cases without paying. It is a more common theme as the demographic moves down the chronological scale. Started with music and now it is everything. We have the right to watch what we want to watch, how and when we want to watch, and to watch not those commercials but the commercials we want to see. It's our RIGHT!

I'd say it is your right to sit in a park and watch a tree grow. A TV show or football game? Pay. Either with subscription or your time (ie: watching commercials).

Canadian outfits, Bell-Shaw-Rogers whatever, pay for licensing American content. Bell's Crave TV pays HBO in the US for rights to distribute HBO library content on HBO Canada and the internet Crave TV platform to Canadians at a subscription cost to Canadians. If you, a Canadian from your home in rural BC, watch an HBO show on HBO's streaming service of the US with a VPN...you are effectively violating Bell's regional right to the content. While it is still the same episode of Westworld....Bell has paid for the distribution rights in Canada. By viewing it directly from the source, be it HBO streaming or even a downloaded file from a torrent....it is those distribution rights that are impacted. There's the firewall part.

Now time travel. This was basis of cable simsub when it was introduced way back in the 70's-80's when distributing US TV networks in Canada became a reality beyond over the air border markets. First, cable providers (which were separate businesses from broadcast TV at the time) had to "match". If they carried NBC from Boston, they HAD to carry the local CTV even though it was available to the market over the air. With this came the simsub. They said it was about culture (political)...yeah right. CTV pays for the episodes of television produced in the US and air it on their station and sell commercials. The availability of US networks directly would negate that regional distribution right, meaning you could watch Johnny Carson direct from the Boston NBC station on cable instead of through CTV who had paid for the Canadian rights to the show. To protect those rights.....simsub. The cable outlet responsibility was to override the US station signal with the Canadian signal when the same program was airing at the same time. You would see the US feed if a show was airing that the local channel didn't carry or it aired at a different time. You'd notice that with time zones differences in some markets. Watching Saturday morning cartoons on US stations because some puppet was singing in French on the CBC.....you would see a bunch of US commercials for treats not available in Canada. First family trip to the US we couldn't wait to try "Doritos" because we were hammered with the commercials.

Back to the present...somehow....simsub debate became "the right of Canadians to watch US commercials" with the whole SuperBowl debate. Political. For Bell...the simsub regs of the CRTC (admittedly dated like everything else about the commission) is no different for the Big Bang Theory than it is for the SuperBowl. Bell pays to air the content in Canada, it is airing at the same time on US feeds, so simsub applies. The stinker is that Bell itself is now so big that it is responsible for its own simsub...so they had to be forced NOT TO simsub on their own satellite/Fibe TV distribution. Political and now, Supreme Court.

And finally, back to firewalls...it is the same thing. Protecting the regional content rights that Canadian businesses are paying for.

Howaboutthat wrote:I don't understand the whole thing. Can someone (non-politically please) explain what the fuss is about and what Bell wants to do... and is it just Bell or are Shaw and Telus involved.Thanks.

I don't think the facts are political in the least, and this firewall thing is related to the current talk about simsub. It gets political when the "public" think they have the right to view produced content how they want and in a lot of cases without paying. It is a more common theme as the demographic moves down the chronological scale. Started with music and now it is everything. We have the right to watch what we want to watch, how and when we want to watch, and to watch not those commercials but the commercials we want to see. It's our RIGHT!

I'd say it is your right to sit in a park and watch a tree grow. A TV show or football game? Pay. Either with subscription or your time (ie: watching commercials).

Canadian outfits, Bell-Shaw-Rogers whatever, pay for licensing American content. Bell's Crave TV pays HBO in the US for rights to distribute HBO library content on HBO Canada and the internet Crave TV platform to Canadians at a subscription cost to Canadians. If you, a Canadian from your home in rural BC, watch an HBO show on HBO's streaming service of the US with a VPN...you are effectively violating Bell's regional right to the content. While it is still the same episode of Westworld....Bell has paid for the distribution rights in Canada. By viewing it directly from the source, be it HBO streaming or even a downloaded file from a torrent....it is those distribution rights that are impacted. There's the firewall part.

Now time travel. This was basis of cable simsub when it was introduced way back in the 70's-80's when distributing US TV networks in Canada became a reality beyond over the air border markets. First, cable providers (which were separate businesses from broadcast TV at the time) had to "match". If they carried NBC from Boston, they HAD to carry the local CTV even though it was available to the market over the air. With this came the simsub. They said it was about culture (political)...yeah right. CTV pays for the episodes of television produced in the US and air it on their station and sell commercials. The availability of US networks directly would negate that regional distribution right, meaning you could watch Johnny Carson direct from the Boston NBC station on cable instead of through CTV who had paid for the Canadian rights to the show. To protect those rights.....simsub. The cable outlet responsibility was to override the US station signal with the Canadian signal when the same program was airing at the same time. You would see the US feed if a show was airing that the local channel didn't carry or it aired at a different time. You'd notice that with time zones differences in some markets. Watching Saturday morning cartoons on US stations because some puppet was singing in French on the CBC.....you would see a bunch of US commercials for treats not available in Canada. First family trip to the US we couldn't wait to try "Doritos" because we were hammered with the commercials.

Back to the present...somehow....simsub debate became "the right of Canadians to watch US commercials" with the whole SuperBowl debate. Political. For Bell...the simsub regs of the CRTC (admittedly dated like everything else about the commission) is no different for the Big Bang Theory than it is for the SuperBowl. Bell pays to air the content in Canada, it is airing at the same time on US feeds, so simsub applies. The stinker is that Bell itself is now so big that it is responsible for its own simsub...so they had to be forced NOT TO simsub on their own satellite/Fibe TV distribution. Political and now, Supreme Court.

And finally, back to firewalls...it is the same thing. Protecting the regional content rights that Canadian businesses are paying for.

Not saying anything is right or wrong...that's politics.

Thank you Dirk, I appreciate that.I have always been a believer in free markets, in that people should be able to watch what they want from whatever source if they're paying for it.As for the Super Bowl commercial subs, no one is forcing CTV to carry the game.... so...IMO anyway

Howaboutthat wrote:Thank you Dirk, I appreciate that.I have always been a believer in free markets, in that people should be able to watch what they want from whatever source if they're paying for it.As for the Super Bowl commercial subs, no one is forcing CTV to carry the game.... so...IMO anyway

True about CTV. Also, no one is forcing Bell/Rogers/Shaw to provide the US network feeds as part of satellite/fibe TV service. When cable distribution was separate from broadcast TV...then line was much clearer.

And that's the big deal part of the firewall debate. If the internet connectivity, which is paid for, is the "source", is everything on it free? Some honestly think that is the case.

Michael Geist being on top of this with his site http://www.michaelgeist.ca/ He has five pieces that cover many of the details. Basicly building a case, as a good lawyer does, to show the reality.

I want to point out that blocking is a waste of time, and the bureaucracy to go with it, the same. The internet is a telephone system, and if you know the number (ip address) then it can be typed in, rather than a domain name. Domain names are easier to remember, thus their use.